Don’t Wake Up Grumpy — Let Her Sleep

If you’re a regular reader of this career success blog, you know that I love Twitter. It provides an easy way to build your on line presence. Common sense suggests that easy is better than difficult. The other day, I saw a great tweet. It said…

You get to choose your attitude. If you wake up grumpy, but her back to sleep and choose to wake up happy and motivated to create the career success you want and deserve. Pull yourself off that mattress with a bounce in your step and the right attitude for the day ahead.

You demonstrate your commitment to your career success – to yourself and to the world — by doing three things. First, take personal responsibility for your career success. Only you can make you a career success. You must be willing to do the things necessary to succeed. Second, set high goals — and then do whatever it takes to achieve them. Third, stuff happens. As you go through life you will encounter many problems and setbacks. You need to react positively to the negative stuff and move forward toward your goals, dreams and career success.

Waking up grumpy is not going to help you with any of these three. When you let a grumpy mood run your day, it becomes difficult to do the things you need to do to achieve your career success goals. You tend to dwell on problems and setbacks. You don’t use them as a springboard for moving toward your life and career success.

The really cool thing here is that you get to choose whether or not to wake up grumpy. I wake up grumpy some days — we all do. As soon as I realize she is awake, I do my best to put her back to sleep and wake up happy and motivated. When I’m happy and motivated, it’s easier for me to focus on my goals and move forward toward my career success.

Successful people do whatever it takes to achieve their goals. This takes commitment and tenacity. It means working towards you goals when you are tired and grumpy. It means not giving up in the face of problems and setbacks. It means doing what needs to be done, not what you want to do, or feel like doing. It’s easier to do this when you’re happy and motivated.

This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Malcolm Forbes…

“Diamonds are nothing more than chunks of coal that stuck to their jobs.”

It takes thousands of years and tremendous amounts of pressure to turn coal into diamonds. While you don’t need to spend thousands of years creating the life and career success you want and deserve, you do have to stick with it.

If you give up every time you wake up grumpy, run into a problem, setback or roadblock you’ll never become a diamond. If you can’t take the pressure, you’ll never become a diamond. You have to stick to it and bare up under the pressure. It doesn’t take a career success coach to tell you that you need to be persistent if you’re going to achieve your goals. It’s just plain old common sense.

I am a fan of Lindsey Vonn, an Olympic gold medal winning alpine skier who makes her home in Vail; so she’s a local as far as I’m concerned. She is the most successful American woman skier in World Cup history. She just had a big weekend, winning the downhill, the slalom and the Super G to kick off the skiing World Cup season.

Lindsey Vonn is 26 years old and has been skiing for 24 of those years. She moved away from home and her family at a young age to pursue her dream of being a world class skier. She started skiing competitively at age seven and competing internationally when she was nine. She is devoted to her sport.

Check out what Lindsey Vonn says about going for your goals…

“When you fall down, just get up again. If you fall get up stronger, hungrier, more ambitious. Setbacks help you concentrate. When success falls into your lap, you lose sight of your goals.”

You can’t get up stronger, hungrier, more ambitious if you wake up grumpy. You can if you let her sleep and wake up happy and motivated.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple. You can choose to wake up grumpy, or to let her sleep. You can also choose to wake up happy and motivated, or to let her sleep. The career advice in Tweet 21 in Success Tweetssuggests that you should wake up happy and motivated, not grumpy. “You’re in charge! Commit to taking personal responsibility for creating the life and career success you want and deserve.” It’s up to you. Choose to commit to taking personal responsibility for your career success. Let grumpy sleep. Wake up happy and motivated instead.

That’s my career advice on letting grumpy sleep. What’s yours? Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us in a comment. What do you do when you accidentally wake up grumpy? How do you put her back to sleep? As always, thanks for reading my musings on life and career success. I appreciate you and I value you and your thoughts and comments.